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Austria's conservative chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, suggested on Friday a far-reaching reform of the EU's Lisbon Treaty to include sanctions against members in debt, penalties for countries that do not register illegal immigrants, and consequences for violations of the rule of law. "We don't want to hand over the EU to the extreme fringes on the left or right, instead we need a strong politics of the centre," he said.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo meets Russia's Sergey Lavrov and other Arctic foreign ministers, amidst a row over climate change. Pompeo is also likely to warn against Chinese advances in the Arctic.

At 22 percent, support for Marine Le Pen's nationalist National Rally (RN) is slightly ahead of president Emmanuel Macron's Republic on Move party (21.5 percent) in an Ipsos survey published on Sunday ahead of EU elections on 26 May in France. The conservative LR was polled third (13.5 percent), EELV Greens (8.5 percent), LFI leftists (8 percent), PS social democrats (5.5 percent) and DLF (Debout la France) (5 percent).

North Macedonia's pro-EU candidate, Stevo Pendarovski, on Sunday won a run-off presidential election with 51.7 percent of the votes, according to initial results. His rival, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova of the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE, got 44.7 percent of the vote. Pendarovski's victory can be seen as a backing for the ruling coalition, which is pushing for a date to start EU accession talks in June and hopes to join Nato next year.

Spain's Supreme Court overturned on Sunday a ban imposed by the country's Central Electoral Board preventing Carles Puigdemont, exiled former Catalonian president, from running as an MEP in the European elections. The court found no legal grounds to bar Puigdemont, who is living in exile in Belgium, or two of his colleagues, adding that fleeing the country did not invalidate his "fundamental right" to stand as a candidate.

With the declared aim to protect the integrity of the European elections, Facebook new political ads rules are preventing these elections from being truly European.

The EU did nothing extraordinary in recently issuing a UN statement on Israel on behalf of 27 countries despite Hungary having vetoed the text, an EU spokesperson said following Hungarian complaints. "EU member states can take the initiative to speak as a group," the spokesperson told EUobserver. The statement, which used formulas such as "the EU says", rehearsed "common positions" previously agreed by the EU-28, including Hungary, the spokesperson added.

Jean-Claude Juncker will hold a relatively rare press conference in Brussels ahead of the informal EU summit of leaders on the way forward in Sibiu, Romania.

Europe has to come to grips with the fact that the balance of opportunities and challenges presented by China differs profoundly between EU member states, be that Greece, Italy, Luxembourg or Germany.

With 75m views in just one week, the European Parliament says its election awareness campaign film "Choose Your Future" has beaten all earlier records, figures updated on Thursday showed.The three-minute film documents the moments when new-born children come into this world across Europe and aims to make viewers reflect on why they vote. The Europe-wide elections are held in all EU countries between 23 and 26 May.

It was "unacceptable" for Finland, the incoming EU presidency, to have issued an EU statement on Israel at the UN earlier this week despite Hungary having vetoed it, Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto told the Euronews broadcaster. "We made it very clear that we do not agree with the text that was finalised," he said, promising to complain to EU foreign relations chief Federica Mogherini.

The top candidates to lead the next European Commission clashed on plans to create an EU army at a debate in the European University Institute in Florence Wednesday. The German centre-right candidate, Manfred Weber, and Belgian liberal one, Guy Verhofstadt, endorsed the idea, but the Dutch centre-left candidate, Frans Timmermans, rejected it as being unrealistic. "There will be no EU army for the foreseeable future," Timmermans said.

Some 600,000 of the 3m EU nationals in the UK have already applied for the "settled status" they need to stay after Brexit, British authorities said Wednesday, adding that there were zero refusals in the first 200,000 applications in a pilot scheme. The European Commission said the same day British 18-year olds can apply until 16 May to get a free European rail pass under its so-called DiscoverEU scheme.

Europeans have "lost our collective libido" and "don't love each other" any more, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has told German daily Handelsblatt on the rising popularity of anti-EU parties across the continent . Brexit was a "special case", he added, because the UK's EU "bride" had been attacked in British media for the past 40 years, he added. "The bride was systematically reviled and then rejected," Juncker said.

The EU has said it will protect EU firms in Cuba from US lawsuits via the World Trade Organisation (WTO) after a new US law came into force Thursday, opening the door to legal challenges. The US move was "contrary to international law" and Europe would use "all appropriate measures to address the [law's] effects ... including in relation to its WTO rights", EU foreign service chief Federica Mogherini said.

Some 52 percent of Germans wanted deeper ties with the EU, while 27 percent said it was better off on its own, according to a poll by ARD-Deutschlandtrend. The pro-EU figure was down five points on April, while the anti-EU one rose by two points. Support grew marginally for left-wing parties and stayed the same for centre-right and far-right ones. Some 81 percent also said climate change was a priority.

Spain has said it would give shelter to Venezuelan opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez and his family after they sought refuge in its embassy in Caracas from government forces. Four people have died in street clashes this week, as Lopez' ally, the EU-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido, called on army chiefs to defect. Spain has extensive oil interests in Venezuela, but the political crisis there has not yet affected its investments.

The US has echoed Danish concerns that China's plan to renovate Greenland's airport and build a new research and satellite centre there could pave the way for a greater military presence in the Arctic. "Civilian research could support a strengthened Chinese military presence in the Arctic Ocean," the Pentagon said in a report. China's growing submarine fleet could lead its military expansion in the High North, it said.

Estonia's new interior minister Mart Helme, from the far-right EKRE party in the ruling coalition, called Estonian president Kersti Kaljulaid an "emotionally heated woman" after she walked out of the swearing-in ceremony of his EKRE colleague, technology and trade minister Marti Kuusik. She did it following media reports that Kusik was guilty of domestic violence, prompting a police enquiry, which saw him quickly resign, despite calling the reports "slander".

The Conservatives suffered a big backlash over Brexit in Thursday's council and mayoral elections in England and Northern Ireland, where Labour and Ukip also lost seats while the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and independent candidates gained support compared to the 2015 elections. Independent candidates won on average 25 percent of the vote where they were standing, the BBC reported. No local elections were held in Scotland and Wales.